


The Lion, The Witch and the Chevrolet Equinox

by AdaptationDecay



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Top Gear (UK)
Genre: Bad Ideas, Bickering, Cars, Comedy, Crack, Gen, Narnia, Snark, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-04 10:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdaptationDecay/pseuds/AdaptationDecay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first person to notice that there's something odd about the car is Hammond...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lion, The Witch and the Chevrolet Equinox

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Thermidor for the 2008 Yuletide challenge.
> 
> Thanks to Llwyden and Moriann for the 11th hour beta!

The first person to notice that there's something odd about the Chevrolet Equinox is Hammond. He comes back from the track, where he's been presenting the review segment, and complains that when he got into the car there was a fan in it. Jeremy makes a predictable and unfunny joke about Richard's fangirls and James offers to buzz security, but Richard says no - not fan - _faun_, there was a faun in the car. He attempts to explain to Jeremy, James and the Stig that the Chevy is a portal to another world, but all he gets in return are suggestions that he take it easy, as "the brain damage might be coming back", so he drags the three of them out to the Chevy to see for themselves.

* * *

"Well?" He says opening the car door wide and gesturing expansively. "Notice anything?"

They look inside the car. Jaws duly drop open.

"Is this for real?"

Richard permits himself a smirk.

"Seeing a portal to another world, are we?"

"No," says Jeremy. "I'm seeing an interior that was clearly designed by Stevie Wonder. It's like the seventies crawled in here to be sick. Brown, dull, ugly. It's like looking inside Slow's wardrobe."

"That's a complete slander," says James, inspecting the inside of the Equinox. "For a start, I don't own any clothes made out of cheap plastic, nor do my outfits come with badly shaped cupholders."

"Nothing's in a useful position; look at it," says Jeremy, leaning into the car in order to demonstrate. Hammond watches him poke about and criticise the organisation of the dashboard. The interior of the car is resolutely _not_ turning into a snowy forest.

"I can see why you don't want to bother reviewing it. It's rubbish. You could have come up with a better excuse, though."

Richard lets Jeremy carry on talking and goes methodically around the car opening all the doors one by one to see if he's missed the portal somehow. He hasn't.

"Tinted windows! It's basically a Chelsea Tractor with slightly better fuel efficiency. How much of a cock do you have to be to put tinted windows in something like this? And the overhead light's bolloxed. Did you do that Hamster? Are you pleading insanity because you broke the car?"

Richard just looks at Jeremy crossly and says, "There _was_ a faun." Then he walks off quickly before he's tempted to punch something.

* * *

The next person to notice something weird about the Chevrolet Equinox is the Stig. He takes it out to do a power lap and returns to the portakabin rather shaky and ill. He blames this on something he ate. A moment later Hammond races in and tries to tell them all that he and Stig have both been transported to another world in the Chevrolet Equinox. Jeremy is convinced this is some sort of homosexualist confession. James is convinced that Richard should see a doctor. The Stig denies anything having happened in the Chevy besides a rather disappointing driving experience, then vanishes into the gents to be sick.

Jeremy and James decide that this is all getting a bit _too_ weird and go in search of Andy.

* * *

Andy listens quietly while they explain what's been going on, then tears a strip off both of them for calling the Hamster a liar.

"We've got a fucking show to do, I don't need the two of you pissing him off when we're supposed to be filming. Now I'll give Mind a ring so she can check with his neurowhatsit, but you might want to bear in mind that if he _is_ ill and his missus finds out the two of you have been tormenting him, she'll have your balls in a blender. Now go finish rehearsals and nobody is to mention the car again unless they're reading from the script. Understand?"

Jeremy and James sheepishly nod their assent and turn to leave, but Andy isn't quite finished.

"I suppose there _isn't_ anything weird about the Equinox?"

James shrugs.

"The Stig said it was fine."

"Fair enough. Get back to work then."

So they do.

* * *

The whole thing might have ended there, were it not for the fact that shortly after lunch it starts pissing it down with rain. The four presenters have long been in the habit of sneaking a quick fag before the show, but there is no question of standing outside in the current weather. Jeremy has just pointed out that if they try, all the product is likely to run out of Richard's hair, when James notices that the Equinox has been left parked outside the hangar. They exchange a look.

"Technically it's a work vehicle."

"But it's not an enclosed space if we leave the doors open."

"In this weather? Will there still be a minicam in it? We could claim it's performance-related smoking..."

"It's got tinted fucking windows. It's not like Gordon Brown can wander past and instantly _see_ that we're giving two fingers up to the nanny state."

And with this in mind, they run out to the Chevy and pile in.

"Um... have I gone blind or is anybody else having trouble?"

"Dome light's knackered, remember? And they've obviously mucked up the tint on the windows. Didn't realise that you're supposed to be able to actually see _out_ of them. Bloody Americans."

This might have continued into a well-worn argument about whether all American cars are shit, had James not attempted to light his cigarette, briefly illuminating their surroundings.

There was a brief silence, and then...

"And the back seat appears to have a forest in it. That's going to completely bugger up the suspension."

* * *

**EIGHTEEN YEARS LATER (or eighteen seconds, depending on whether you present Top Gear or produce it.)**

Andy is trying to sort out the footage of Catherine Tate's lap as Star In A Reasonably Priced Car, when his presenters burst in upon him acting - not to put too fine a point on it - like complete mentalists.

"It's like Rip Van Winkle! Look, we've been gone eighteen years and he hasn't aged a day."

"No," James is saying, patiently. "Because we've gone back to when we got into the car. That's not Rip Van Winkle. That's the _opposite_ of Rip Van Winkle."

"Oh, would you shut up? I should have married you off to the bloody Donkey Man when I had the chance."

"And gone on to do what, exactly? Considering you spent twenty years as a motoring journalist and still couldn't explain how..."

"I knew! I knew it when you explained it!"

"At length," says Richard. "Explained it at length for years. Purgatory," he says, fixing Andy with a wild-eyed stare, "isn't in it."

"What the hell are you all going on about?"

"We got into the magic country in the Chevy Equinox. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the Stig at first, but we got that sorted out and they were all so grateful for me fixing things that they declared me their high king."

"We were all kings," James adds. "Not just Clarkson."

"And we were crowned by a talking lion."

"Good job it wasn't a talking monkey or James might have soiled himself."

"Would you stop going on about me being scared of monkeys!"

"Anyway, the lion put me in charge, because I was the wisest."

"Oldest," corrects Richard. "He said you got to be High King because you were so old you're practically dead; those were very nearly his exact words."

"Would you let me tell it? Anyway, it was all a bit shit at first, because they hadn't got 'round to inventing the internal combustion engine, but we soon fixed that."

"What's all this _we_? You didn't even know how one worked!"

"Yes, all right. James got a chance to show off all his boring science knowledge, and in the end we got the dwarves interested. It took a while to get the infrastructure in place, but Archenland were putting out a fairly decent supercar when we left, and there was this cracking driving road up near Redhaven..."

Andy is glad that Hammond's not having a relapse, but is slightly annoyed that he's worried Mindy for nothing, given that this whole story is obviously a rather shit joke on the part of his presenters.

* * *

Filming is a shambles. They perform as if they've not had a glimpse of the script in decades, despite having managed perfectly well in that morning's rehearsal.

* * *

Meanwhile, on a Narnian motorway, Aslan watches a faun plough into the back of a marshwiggle driving a Paravel 600 and decides that his plan to let the Top Gear presenters rule Narnia was ambitious, but rubbish.


End file.
